Serf City: The Best of 1994

Hello, crafty and sundry!

Now, I’ve been a gamer my entire life. There are games I still play all the time that are legal to drink in the US now, like my oft-played fave Serf City: Life is Feudal(Also known as The Settlers). I often have it up while I am doing other things because it is a very slow-paced real time strategy, which means that I can game while knitting or writing (or at least, have the sensation of gaming).

I also tend to like it better than later entries in the series because it’s not quite so battle oriented. I enjoy the building and economy aspects more than anything else — having to constantly fight is more stressful than enjoyable to me.

Having said that, The Settlers II is probably even more enjoyable mechanically, and I will get into jags of playing that as well. My main complaint is that it is lacking in random map generation like the first one, which is one of the reasons I still play it obsessively — with some millions (or billions) of potential maps, it keeps it an enjoyable challenge. Settlers II had a mod that someone created where you could craft your own maps, but that steals the fun of discovery and planning on the fly.

So with that in mind, I was happy to remember I hadn’t actually installed The Settlers II 10th Anniversary Edition. The changes in graphics took a tiny bit of adjusting to get used to, but the gameplay is mainly the same as the original. As a bonus, there’s a pile of generated maps to play with. There’s not millions or billions, but it makes the game more playable to have the options. The maps are still tiny by my reckoning (I love how big a map you can generate with Serf City), but it’s been fun tinkering around in it again.

I’ve also been dabbling again on another 1994 classic — Sid Meier’s Colonization. Even though I also own the remake, I always find myself drifting back to the original. No idea why. I guess I really like 8-bit blockiness? I really have to be in a mood for it because of how different in feel it was to the first three Civilization games. It’s also why, in part, I’ve not really gotten on with IV (though I like V a bit better).

Really though, I have so many freaking name games to check out that it’s hilarious that I’m wallowing in old goodies. The Steam Summer Sale has been and gone, and as usual, I raked in a bunch of inexpensive and steeply discounted goodies — something like 15 games for under £25 total. I don’t even know where to begin if I’m honest, because Steam is really good for collective games to play later. Which means I’ll get around to playing them all. Later.

Because of Math™®, I have been hardcore slacking in my knitting. I’m to a point where I’m doing decreases on both sides of the piece in different ways, and my brain hasn’t gotten around to wanting to deal with it. I’ve got my colour guide scribbled down, so that’s a step closer to getting my butt back into gear.

I’m also avoiding the lure of small projects to avoid math. My littlest had her first birthday this month, and a friend got her a dolly (cheeky cow, ha ha). As the dolly came in a pink outfit, and I am doing my best to raise gender neutral children, I now ‘have’ to make doll clothing. So far, the dolly has a bum covering that I knitted off of a preemie pattern for a soaker. I’ve also got a few outfits that should work, but like… must make myself math first. I need to know the math before I do the other front piece on this cardigan, so it would behoove me to buckle down and get it done. I know that once I actually get going it’ll be fine, but man, inertia.

Past that, my brain got stuck on something it ‘needed’ to do — get yet another blog set up. I’d bought Raeyn.com for the obvious reason — it’s my name and I ‘needed’ it. But I dislike having domains sitting around doing nothing, so I had to think about what I wanted to do with it. And then I had to think about layout and design. It’ll be snark and opinion if that’s your thing, so feel free to check it out. And in the meantime, I can hope that now that that’s ‘done’, my brain will relent and let me get some other crap done that needs doing, ha ha.